Building and Breaking Nations: The Metis, Capitalism, and States in the North American West, 1870-1935

This dissertation examines how settler colonization and state formation impacted an Indigenous nation and their identities in the North American West over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than commonalities, I explore how Métis communities experienced Canada and the United States differently. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the Métis witnessed the bison, an essential source of food and trade goods, be nearly eliminated from the northern Great Plains. Canada and the United States had begun to expand national economies westward, leading to mass settlement, commercial agriculture, and continent-wide industrial capitalist and market systems. Although bison hunting had been socially and economically important, I emphasize Métis communities' adaptations to these circumstances. I use census records, estate files, tribal court documents, and other archival material to understand household structures, livelihoods, land tenure, and geographic divisions after the end of the fur trade and during Canadian and American nation-building. In doing so, I highlight Métis socioeconomic cohesion and division over time but show how distinct political and legal contexts shaped family strategies, economic opportunities, and political consciousness. I reveal that Métis communities gradually reworked the concepts of collective identity, governance, and rights depending on their position north or south of the border. I show that this process led to the formation of a distinct Métis national identity in Canada, which did not come together in the United States. By centring the view from below and human agency where possible, this dissertation brings historical processes to the forefront and emphasizes the historical construction of collective identities.